Entries
What Happened? Russell Crowe
This one is a little scary to undertake, because Russell Crowe is a little scary. I'm not talking about thrown phones - good grief, people, actors don't get into acting because they're happy and well-adjusted - I'm talking about onscreen …
Complete Rundown of The San Diego Latino Film Festival's Opening Night Celebración!
Get ready for 11 jam-packed days and over 150 films: the San Diego Latino Film Festival kicks off it 19th year tonight. Kudos to Ethan van Thillo and his staff for putting together another el supremo festival de cinema internacional. …
Reviews!
David Elliott is rested and ready following his post-Oscars period of mourning, and so here we go with Ralph "I Wasn't Always Voldemort" Fiennes' Coriolanus: "While never pleasurable, Coriolanus has austere power. It is a harsh warning about the price …
Dig a Hole: Robert B. Sherman, Disney Songwriter
Robert B. Sherman, who along with his younger brother, Richard M. Sherman, was responsible for numerous cherished Disney classics, died Monday, March 5 in London. He was 86. Robert B. Sherman. Before answering his musical calling, Robert B. Sherman was …
The San Diego Asian Film Festival Encourages You to Let the Bullets Fly
Let the Bullets Fly begins its run this Friday at Reading Cinemas Gaslamp 15, and the San Diego Asian Film Festival wants you to attend. Directed by Jiang Wen (Devils on the Doorstep, The Sun Also Rises) and starring the …
Promotional Tie-Ins 101
How's this for a brilliant bit of joint promotion? What better than The Lorax to give its seal of approval to children's diapers? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Aren't parents and their children the ones to absorb the …
"Because we lost the war."
That's another line from the author Walker Percy, in answer to a question about why the South produced so many fine writers. And if it's true what John Gardner wrote in On Moral Fiction, that art begins in a wound, …
Michigan Man Files Suit Against AMC Theatres Over Costly Concession Prices
A security technician from Livonia, Michigan is taking AMC Theatres to court over the high price of popcorn. Joshua Thompson, fed up with being gouged at the concession stand, retained the services of an attorney and decided to send a …
Well played, Illumination.
"I know! Let's make a kids' movie where the villain is an economic overlord who doesn't care one whit about pollution, whose hold on the town's citizens is so complete that he owns the very air they breathe. Let's give …
Dig a Hole: Bruce Surtees, The Prince of Darkness
He was the Prince of Darkness, the man who lowered the bar when it came to low-key lighting. Most cinematographers fear “losing the light” come sundown. Bruce Surtees’ motto was lose the light. Bruce Mohr Powell Surtees died on February …
Short Takes: The Lorax
Color Dr. Seuss’s “earth-friendly” children’s book gloomy-green and Illumination Entertainment’s animated counterpart a blinding shade of pestled-pastels. (Consider sporting two pair of 3D specs.) The environmental fable holds firm, only this time our young hero does it all to impress …
Review: Project X
Here's my problem with the party-gone-wild movie Project X: someone took a perfectly good black comedy and grafted it onto an '80s-style fairy tale. Think, I dunno, Heathers mashed up with Risky Business. Or a ravenous, rabid Bengal tiger with …
Tim and Eric's $275.00 Interview
Bad taste stalks me with a near John Warnock Hinckley-like intensity. I sat amongst the opening-nighters when Pink Flamingos premiered and was the first kid on the block to discover Jackass. Having never seen an episode of Tim and Eric …
Review: John Carter of Mars
Relax everybody: no review embargoes have been broken, no colleagues beaten to the punch. Civil War veteran-turned martian-hunter, John Carter, was born in 1912 when Edgar Rice Burroughs' stories first began appearing in the pages of the pulp magazine The …
Project X Interview: Kirby Bliss Blanton
A new day, a new trailer for Project X, the party-gone-wild movie opening Friday: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj_ZNnehHAQ You wouldn't know it from the trailer, but Kirby Bliss Blanton plays a pretty big role in the story as Kirby, the hero's friend-who's-a-girl but …
Watch Walt Disney's The Story of Menstruation (1946)
I know what you're thinking: 'Disney' and 'menstruation' in the same headline means Marks is making funny again with a Jib-Jab video of Jiminy Cricket singing When You Wish Upon a Bladder. Maybe there will be a mild attempt at …
Project X Interview: Alexis Knapp
So the kids-gone-wild party movie Project X opens Friday: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBv54LhBWyQ "Tonight's about the girls we never had a shot at" - that's high school senior Castro, talking to his friend Thomas. The night in question is Thomas's 17th birthday party. …
Review: Tomorrow, When the War Began
NOTA BENE: Mr. Marks drew official duties on this one, and you can check out his black-spot review in tomorrow's online edition of this fine media establishment. But we're nothing if not contentious here at The Big Screen, so here …
Blogfight: Interview Inequity!
I don't want to come off sounding like a complainer, but haven't things gone a tad out of focus at The Big Screen? Here are the people I have interviewed so far this year: Wim Wenders. Tim & Eric. Look …